Travelling the world to find yourself
Have you ever felt as if you’ve lost sight of yourself? It’s the strangest feeling because obviously everywhere you go, there you are, but sometimes in life it’s as if the real you, your truest, deepest self, did a moonlight flit while you weren’t looking. And usually you weren’t looking because you were too busy dealing with the crap life was slinging at you, like work, responsibilities … and, uh, a global pandemic.
The worst thing about losing sight of your true self is that you don’t realise that it’s happened – sometimes for years! And so on you plod, a paler, duller, smaller version of yourself, fielding curve balls and lugging your workload and other commitments. But if you’re lucky, something or someone, or a combination of both, will arrive out of the blue and jolt your true self from its slumber.
This is exactly what happened to me on my recent trip to Jamaica.
In the previous instalment of Wonderstruck I talked about how the trip had come about, and how I had zero expectations before boarding the plane.
The jolt that brought me back to my senses came right after the plane touched down. My friend and I had booked to stay for our first few days at a farm in the mountains, far from the tourist trail. They’d sent a driver to collect us, a lovely big guy with a hearty chuckle and a beaming smile, randomly named Betty (or at least that’s what I thought he said, my ears were still ringing a little from the cabin pressure). Within minutes we were peeling away from the main roads of Montego Bay and tearing along the twisting, turning, potholed roads leading deep into the country.
My eyes were on stalks from the start. The lush green vegetation, peppered with box-shaped brightly coloured buildings constructed from slats of wood and sheets of corrugated metal were like nothing I’d ever seen before. We most definitely were not in Kansas anymore!
At first I just drank it in, then I reached for my camera, suddenly aware that something important was happening and that I needed to record it.
After about 45 minutes ‘Betty’ asked if we’d like to stop for some authentic Jamaican street food so we pulled up at a huge grill by the roadside selling jerk chicken. I offered to buy and had my first experience dealing with Jamaican dollars. Having never handled $5,000 bills before I felt embarrassed at being the awkward tourist slowly counting out my notes, but my discomfort provided another much needed jolt. Thanks to the pandemic it had been almost 3 years since I’d been abroad. The old me, the true me, loved to travel out of her comfort zone, and I felt her essence begin kindling back into life.
We returned to the car with foil wraps full of chicken and greasy paper bags of these fried dumplings named festivals – which tasted like savoury donuts and were truly delicious.
Cue more insane driving, which made eating feel like an extreme sport. The challenge of getting a piece of chicken into your mouth while Betty swerved around potholes and random stray goats was real!
By the time we arrived at our destination night had fallen and dramatically so. Like everything else in Jamaica sunset is an intense and speedy process, apparently it’s something to do with being closer to the equator. As we drove up a bumpy dirt track through a field of shoulder-high sugar cane, illuminated only by the golden pools of the car headlights I felt excitement building inside of me.
We weren’t in Kansas anymore but my Kansas, back in the UK, with its manicured gardens and ruler straight roads had dulled my senses and turned me into a kind of automaton.
There was a wildness about Jamaica that was a like a shot of adrenalin straight to the heart of my true self. And as we pulled up at our destination – essentially a giant tree house in the middle of a tropical forest – I felt my true self rousing back into life, and it was like being reunited with a long lost, much loved friend.
Next week: the invaluable lessons a Rastaman taught me about life and love and creativity